Search This Blog

30 May 2007

The chief problem with medical and bio-science ethics and morals is that the technology tends to be 5, 10 or 20 years ahead of the theology and the philosophy. The great ethicists and theologians to date have never said a word about the possibility of people trading their birth head for a designer head.

Hell, they never even had any guidance for what bald men should do if science ever invents a cure for baldness. Or a cure for ED. Before the 1990s, you just went bald and drooped and took it like a man and sucked it up.

What Would Vleeptron Do? What does the Talmud say? What does Doctor Phil think? Ann Landers or Dear Abby? Benedict Spinoza? Alfred North Whitehead? Bertrand Russell?

Like, so far, nothing. Nada. Bupkis. You're on your own, pal. Here's the new kidney. Figure it out for yourself.

I think it's important, before all the screaming and cursing begins, to separate two issues:

* Is it ethical and moral?

* Is it tasteful and dignified?

Maybe what Dutch TV has got here is like Jerry Springer Saves Your Daughter's Life. Or MTV Real World does a heart transplant on you, and then everybody goes bunji jumping in Acapulco.

I don't want to see it.

But I sure do want to keep living for another decade or two. Maybe I just have to suck up my pride and dignity and good taste and elegance, and take the TV deal.

I suspect Dignity was always just an Illusion anyway. The surface of the world is paved entirely with banana peels, and every one of us is just an instant away from landing on our ass in the mud while a small crowd laughs.

If you want Dignity, buy a $40 ticket to "King Lear," and for two hours you can watch a horrible dysfunctional family mess -- exactly like your own horrible dysfunctional family mess -- but as you watch in the dark, every family member is wearing beautiful robes and crowns and speaketh in gorgeous, wise, dignified poetry, and nobody trips on a banana peel. For two hours you can see a big family fight worth carving into marble, and even worth watching again and again.

In your own life, the world promises you all the Dignity to which Donald Duck and Spongebob Squarepants are entitled. As Spinoza would say: Just take the kidney and shut up.

[image:] Bart de Graaff who died five years ago now has a television programme in honour of him, called 'The Donor Show,' Bart News Network (BNN) the show broadcaster, says it wants to highlight the difficulties faced by kidney sufferers in getting donor organs as a tribute to BNN founder Bart de Graaff, who died of kidney failure five years ago, despite several transplants. 'The Donor Show' will be broadcast on Dutch television during the evening of 01 June 2007. EPA/KIPPA

Brussels -- The European Union on Wednesday unveiled plans aimed at boosting organ donations and transplants while sharply criticising a Dutch TV show in which a dying woman is due to choose a recipient for her kidneys with viewers advising her via text message.

EU health commissioner Markos Kyprianou said he was 'shocked' by the concept of the reality TV show, which is due to air Friday.

'This is not the way I would have chosen to raise awareness for such a sensitive and serious issue,' Kyprianou told reporters. 'Some people will make money with it (the show), but we can raise awareness in a different way than by commercial action,' he said.

Dutch broadcaster BNN has said it would broadcast The Big Donorshowduring which a 37-year-old woman is supposed to choose which of three kidney patients should receive her organ, despite calls from the government for the programme to be scrapped.

Viewers will be able to send text messages advising the woman whom to pick as the recipient for her kidney after she dies.

The new EU plans to increase the number of organ donations in the 27-member bloc focus on the creation of a European donor card to make it easier to identify people who are willing to donate organs.

Almost 10 people in Europe die every day while waiting for an organ, the commission said, adding that some 40,000 patients across the EU are currently on waiting lists for an organ transplant.

The EU executive's proposals to boost organ availability also include creating organ transplant coordinators in hospitals and expanding the use of living donors.

EU member states must harmonise their donor policies and better cooperate in the exchange of best practices, the commission said.

Kyprianou said that the EU needed 'common standards on the quality and safety of organ donations and transplantations ... to secure a sufficient and safe supply of organs.'

Increasing organ donations was also vital to fight illegal trafficking in human organs, the commission said, pledging to keep a close eye on organ trafficking activities.

Organ donation and transplant rates in the EU differ widely, ranging from 34.6 donors per million people in Spain to 13.8 donors in Britain, 6 donors in Greece and only 0.5 donors in Romania.

The EU countries with the highest number of donor card holders are the Netherlands (44 per cent), Sweden (30 per cent) and Ireland (29 per cent), the commission said, adding that there was a wide gap between the acceptance of such cards and their take-up.

29 May 2007

"Our brave young men and women in Iraq have been abandoned there indefinitely by their cowardly leaders who move them around like pawns on a chessboard of destruction" -- Cindy SheehanWASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Activist Cindy Sheehan announced she was ending her public campaign against the Iraq war with an angry blast at Democrats, Republicans and "cowardly leaders" who have abandoned U.S. troops indefinitely in Iraq.

"This is my resignation letter as the 'face' of the American anti-war movement," Sheehan said in a Memorial Day posting Monday on the Web site Daily Kos.

Sheehan became a leading voice against the Iraq conflict after her son, Casey, was killed in combat in 2004.

She was a frequent protester in President George W. Bush's adopted hometown of Crawford, Texas. She began visiting Crawford in the summer of 2005 when she wanted to meet with Bush while he was vacationing at his ranch. Bush had met with her after her son died but did not see her again, although he sent two top aides to talk to her.

The White House had no comment on Sheehan's announcement.

Sheehan said she had reached the conclusion over the Memorial Day holiday that her son "did indeed die for nothing" and was "killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think."

"Our brave young men and women in Iraq have been abandoned there indefinitely by their cowardly leaders who move them around like pawns on a chessboard of destruction," she wrote.

Sheehan criticized Democrats, saying they had turned against her when she tried to hold them to the same standards she held Republicans. And she expressed frustration with an anti-war movement that she said "often puts personal egos above peace and human life."

"I am going to take whatever I have left and go home," she wrote. "I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost."

"Good-bye America ... you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can't make you be that country unless you want it," she said. "It's up to you now."

Democrats have been under increasing pressure from liberal groups to turn the tide against the Iraq war since they took control of Congress this year.

"Prelude," a CD of piano performances for one hand, by Adrienne Wiley, Professor of Piano Pedagogy and Applied Piano at Central Michigan University. Wiley writes:

It is interesting to note that the right hand and arm are much more frequently injured than the left, thus about 99 percent of all single-handed piano music is written for the left hand. There is, however, a small body of works written for the right hand. There is also a substantial number of accessible educational pieces for the elementary through late intermediate/early advanced pianist adaptable for either the left or right hand ...

In America during the 1870s and 1880s, several composers, including Arthur Foote (1853-1937), produced works for one hand. One popular compositional idiom at that time was the transcription of folk melodies; thus, many of the single-handed pieces were arrangements of such familiar tunes as "Home, Sweet Home." ...

[U.S. Civil War/War Between the States: 1861-1865]

One important contributor to the single-handed repertoire during the twentieth century was pianist Paul Wittgenstein (1887-1961), who lost his right arm during the First World War. Not only did he write several books of etudes for the left hand, but he also commissioned over 40 works from well-known twentieth-century composers. His ability to commission and pay for single-handed works has provided an invaluable source of literature for pianists today.

==========

President George W. Bush Jr. begins a month of summer vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas today, the day after Memorial Day. He made a Memorial Day speech at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. During his vacation, anti-war protesters plan to camp outside his ranch as they have in previous years.

Those who have not been soldiers tend to overlook the obvious about soldiers: They are as talented and diverse a bunch of men and women as civilians. In most wars most of them are just civilian "temps" forced into a few years of pretending to act and think like soldiers.

But in or out of uniform, they are pianists, singers, actors, baseball and football players, tango and ballet dancers, painters, dreamers, astronomers, mathematicians, writers, poets, chefs de cuisine, cowgirls and cowboys.

In a fascinating radio documentary about the US Navy aircraft carrier John C. Stennis -- a floating medium-sized city -- on war duty in the Arabian Sea revealed its bowels infested with amateur rock bands, rehearsing as far as possible from crew sleeping quarters, the music echoing down every corridor. Jimi Hendrix began his musical career playing guitar at military clubs at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he served as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division. When not playing popular music, he spent his time jumping out of airplanes with full pack and infantry rifle.

The Allied Coalition, led by the USA, invaded Iraq on 20 March 2003. In a speech aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on 1 May 2003, Commander-in-Chief Bush declared victory was achieved and our combat operations had ended; behind him was a huge "Mission Accomplished" banner.

But the war in Iraq has now lasted longer than the period from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to V-J (Victory over Japan) Day -- unconditional victories for America and its allies over Japan, Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. President Bush just used his veto to forbid Congress from imposing any deadline for withdrawing American troops from Iraq. There is no end in sight to this war.

Pardon this Crummy Old Wine, but when this scoundrels' and liars' war began, I wrote this for f_minor, the List devoted to the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould.

I think it's important to remember that good young pianists are getting their hands blown off over there, and good young saxophonists and dreamers are getting their heads blown off over there.

Sender: "Mailing list devoted to the discussion of Glenn Gould's work and life."

Dearest f_minorites everywhere,

One feature of my cable TV system is about fifty genre channels of FM-quality continuous music. The other day I looked up at the screen and noticed that one of its classical channels was playing a piano piece for orchestra and right hand (sorry I didn't copy down the title).

From the style and era, I suspect I knew the naughty little secret about the composition, which wasn't mentioned in the screen's "fun facts."

In the decade following World War I, a large body of piano music was composed for one-hand piano, because a large number of Europe's most promising and gifted young pianists returned from the war missing a hand or an arm. I've heard quite a few of these pieces, and surprisingly very few of them are maudlin or somber or funereal or grim, they're usually quite upbeat and major key, yet none could be described as Pollyannaesque. Just because you play the piano and have had one of your hands blown off or amputated is no reason to want to live out the rest of your musical life playing the blues, and most of the composers were pretty hip to this.

As much of the Internet has heated up and boiled over because of this ghastly and (to me) inexplicable war, f_minor seems to have fallen largely silent. There is a protocol, usually unspoken, about lists like this, and I suspect most of us with deep feelings about this grotesque war feel a bit embarrassed about groping around to link it to Glenn Gould.

And then another difficulty, or oddity, or embarrassment: this List originates in the USA, and conducts nearly all its business in the English language. It is just possible that the more polite among us don't want to hurt anyone's feelings -- Continental Europe has expressed very different and very heated feelings about this war from the official positions of the governments of the UK and the USA.

And that's to the wonderful credit of the highest values of this civilized, educated and cultured bunch. War makes it seem quirky and odd -- people getting their piano hands shot off in large numbers, and other people not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings.

Well, I will dutifully provide a link to the List topic. GG provided the Bach score to the movie version of one of world literature's most moving first-person testaments of the rain of war death on civilians from the sky: "Slaughterhouse Five." (It only seems like a goofy science fiction novel; Vonnegut was a young enlisted American soldier when he was sent as a prisoner of war just in time to witness and barely survive the firebombing of Dresden -- a city whose contribution to the war effort was the manufacture of exquisite porcelain figurines.)

Link provided, I will now speak to this remarkable crew -- the skimmed cream and the stewards and guardians of whatever this world can honestly claim to have created of beauty, thought, culture -- about this dreadful war, and war in general.

Perhaps once in a long lifetime, perhaps no more than once in a century, a war does indeed take place that must be fought FOR good and decent and human and humane things. I am thinking of one war in particular; its guns finally fell silent two years before I was born. A century earlier, for Americans, the shame and scourge of slavery ended because of a monstrous, ruinous, fratricidal war, although all my reading and all my visits to its great battlefields cannot convince me that slavery could not have somehow been ended, nearly as swiftly, through ideas, pursuasion, through the peaceful arts of a democracy.

Since 1945, the world has been plagued by a continuing string of wars that I cannot possibly classify as having had any necessary or possible virtues, except the most primitive virtue of exhausting and finally ending itself. In recent decades, younger historians have stopped talking about World War I and World War II, and have just described the unhappy 20th century as the Century of War. To the dead, to the maimed, to the veteran, to the refugee, the distinctions between wars do indeed seem small, or trivial, or non-existent.

I myself am a veteran of one of these meaningless, inexplicable and very long wars, and served two conscripted years far, I am happy to report, from the sounds of guns, typing dutifully away (you have probably noticed I am a very verbose typist with few errors), often in air-conditioned offices; I could not have requested a safer and more inoccuous soldier experience, though I braved death daily and nightly aboard my beloved Triumph motorcycle. Many of my friends were not nearly so fortunate, and if I had the courage, I could find their names engraved on the Vietnam War Memorial in my hometown of Washington DC; I visit Washington often and have scrupulously never visited it.

If the wars since 1945 have drifted into a pattern of meaninglessness and mindless slaughter and waste, this current war threatens to establish and enshrine a new pattern for the future of America and the world: America as The New Rome, the world's most powerful military and economic machine demanding that its will be obeyed throughout the world, or murderous consequences will be projected to whomever we perceive is defying us.

America in the past has indeed experimented with "gunboat diplomacy" both actively and theatrically; when President Theodore Roosevelt sent our new huge warfleet around the world, not a shot was fired in anger, but a very clear message was delivered in every port where our cannons boomed a "diplomatic" salute. (One of the hydrogen bombs dropped on the Soviets in "Dr. Strangelove" is graffitied "HI THERE.") But I do not think that this was really ever what most Americans wanted America to do or to represent to our neighbors throughout the world.

The phrase "Pax Americana" is being bandied about in the world's newspapers -- a peace designed and maintained by the threat of the quick projection of overwhelming military force, like the Pax Romana and Pax Brittanica of old.

If anyone is curious, I do not want to be a citizen of The New Rome; I do not want a Pax Americana -- except a Jimmy Carter style of diplomatic American leadership. If we are big, rich and powerful, let us content ourselves to express it in treaties and peaceful pursuasion, a vision which just earned Mr. Carter the Nobel Peace Prize. The "impossible" peace treaty he brokered between Egypt and Israel lasts to this moment, though no one can promise it will survive President Bush's actions in the Middle East.

Diplomacy, and the peaceful and verbal sorting out of sovereign disputes, is so very frustrating and tedious and time-consuming.

War, on the other hand, is so simple and emotionally satisfying, and boils away all controversy.

We here should not, I think, feel embarrassed or fall silent at such moments because our thoughts and loves are of beauty and the highest achievements of culture. We are the stewards of the only human-made things which make Earth an interesting and unique place to visit or eavesdrop on. No matter how many intelligent and advanced civilizations there exist in our Milky Way galaxy -- tens of thousands is the guess of Sagan and his expert colleagues -- there is only one Mozart in the whole Universe, and only, for that matter, one Glenn Gould to interpret him sublimely or wrong-headedly.

One of my soft spots for World War II is because, in the 1930s, as he saw the handwriting on the wall, a German labor union activist buried his beloved treasury of phonograph records of the live performances of Kurt Weill's and Bertolt Brecht's cabaret and opera music in oilcloth in his backyard, and then fled one step ahead of the Gestapo. When he returned in '46, he dug it up again, and I've had the wonderful pleasure of hearing CD transcriptions of these original squawky recordings from the '20s and '30s, in German and French, with Lotte Lenya's tremulous and beautiful voice. Wars are accompanied, far too rarely, by these desperate moments of the preservation and salvation of beauty. I have been told that the Swedes authentically revere the historical Baron von Munchausen -- a genuine lecher, parasite and sociopathic liar -- because he likewise buried and saved some gorgeous ancient tapestries one step ahead of an advancing army, and they can still be viewed today in Upsula.

Iraq -- Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Uruk, Ur -- is honeycombed with ancient treasures; it is one of the cradles of world civilization. They invented, among other things, writing, the preservation of records and literature and science, in wedge-shaped marks on soft clay, which baked in the sun and then proved to be remarkably survivable over millennia. They could predict solar and lunar eclipses -- an astonishing achievement not to be matched by our science for 4000 years. And yet we moderns have only begun to get a glimpse of and to translate these ancient treasures starting around 1880.

Each modern high-explosive war that descends on this land destroys our own heritage and history unrecoverably and forever.

George Orwell was only the first visionary to suggest that a future world that designs itself around perpetual (and meaningless) war would first strive to erase the history of the world; knowing our own history intimately always boils up passions to preserve and save and to know more of our ancient heritage. A world robbed of contact with its past is a world that can be sold on any idea, however nonsensical or genocidal or suicidal, however many past times it was tried with terrible results.

And yet I would argue that no one who has read "Gilgamesh" (I strongly urge Herbert Warren Mason Jr.'s beautiful translation) can wish MOAB -- America's recently unveiled "Mother Of All Bombs" -- to fall on this land, to pulverize the treasures that still remain of our nursery. You will find no apologies from me for Sadaam Hussein, but at his worst he is a thing of the blink of an eye, but "Gilgamesh" (there are still many missing sections, though they are almost certainly waiting somewhere underground) and the rest of Mesopotamia's yet undiscovered treasures are the fragile things of ages. A huge volume of these treasures will be reduced to dust by this war.

If we are truly Not Like Him, then we need to prove that by finding ways to do good and necessary things in the world in peaceful, diplomatic, broadly supported ways which prove to the world that we are Not Like Him.

Well, thank you all for suffering through these words. Quite simply, I did not want this war. I spent a lovely four hours in jail, with the loveliest and most thoughtful fellow criminals, protesting the first Iraqi war and perhaps will book myself into the same jail to protest this one. I am unabashedly a pacifist, stuck in a very flawed world where perhaps one war per century must just play itself out and then have some claim that good things were accomplished.

But not this one. A speedy end to it, and no more of them. I wish us all the preservation of beauty, and of course the safety of all our sisters and brothers, of every child of God, in any uniform, in any style of civilian dress.

As of Monday, May 28, 2007, at least 3,452 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2,809 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

The AP count is 19 higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Friday at 10 a.m. EDT.

* Army Pvt. William L. Bailey III, 29, Bellevue, Nebraska; died Friday in Taji of wounds suffered when an explosive detonated near his vehicle; was assigned to the 755th Chemical Reconnaissance/Decontamination Company, Nebraska Army National Guard, O'Neill, Nebraska.

* Army Spc. Alexander Rosa Jr., 22, Orlando, Florida.; died Friday by an explosion in Muqdadiyah; was assigned to the 89th Military Police Brigade, Fort Hood, Texas.

* Two soldiers died Wednesday in Nahrawan of wounds suffered when an explosive detonated near their vehicle. Both were assigned to 3rd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized), Fort Benning, Georgia. The soldiers were:

* Army Cpl. Victor H. Toledo Pulido, 22, Hanford, California.

* Army Cpl. Jonathan D. Winterbottom, 21, Falls Church, Virginia.

* Two soldiers were killed Thursday by an explosion in Baghdad. Both were assigned to 1st Brigade Transition Team, and attached to the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kansas. The soldiers were:

Zimbabwean women protesters being driven to jail by police, and a Zimbabwean woman after police beat her with nightsticks during an anti-government protest.

BBC (UK)Monday 28 May 2007

Zimbabwe to boostpolice for poll

The police are accused of favouring the ruling party

Zimbabwe has started a massive recruitment drive to almost double numbers ahead of next year's election, a senior police officer says.

Faustino Mazango told the state-owned Herald newspaper that he wanted to have 50,000 officers for the elections, up from 29,000 at present.

Correspondents say this will be seen as the start of preparations for a crackdown on the opposition.

President Robert Mugabe has said he intends to stand for re-election.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) often accuses the police of harassing and beating its members.

Pretext

Almost 200 MDC activists were arrested on Saturday but have been released without charge.

A police spokesman had said Saturday's arrests were in connection with recent bombings around the capital, Harare.

MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa says that some of those arrested were beaten and have gone to hospital.

The government accuses the MDC of stirring up election violence.

It denies these charges and says they are a pretext to justify clamping down on its activities.

"We have started a massive recruitment exercise so that we have a minimum of 50,000 police officers by the time we have elections," The Herald quotes Senior Assistant Commissioner Mazango as saying.

The AFP news agency reports that many police officers are leaving the force to seek better paid work elsewhere.

In March, scores of MDC activists, including party leader Morgan Tsvangirai, were severely assaulted in police custody, sparking international condemnation.

President Mugabe has said Mr Tsvangirai deserved to be assaulted for ignoring police warnings not to go ahead with a banned rally.

- 30 -

ZIMBABWE: A NATION IN CRISISKEY DEVELOPMENTS

Mobiles to beat fuel queuesMoral decayForty years of schoolingBorn free: Life under MugabeLittle to celebrateMugabe's hold over AfricaMugabe: What next?Q&A: Zimbabwe meltdown

PERSONAL STORIES

A Zimbabwean woman crawls under a fence Border jumpersHow far would you go to put food on the table?

Where are Zimbabweans going?

HAVE YOUR SAYWhat next for Zimbabwe?

RELATED INTERNET LINKSThe HeraldMDCThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

===========

The Herald (Harare, Zimbabwe)Tuesday 29 May 2007Zimbabweans mustexpose US lies

EDITOR -- The travel warning issued by the United States government to its citizensagainst travelling to Zimbabwe, shows that Washington has not given up its drive to effect illegal regime change in our country.

The statement, issued on May 11 2007, was ample evidence that the US is still conducting psychological warfare and an attempted blockade against Zimbabwe.

The Bush administration is fixated with smearing our image by groundlessly accusing our political leaders of condoning what they call "security forces’ use of violence, including lethal force, against anyone the Government perceives as an opponent".

When our security forces arrest, and our courts convict, people who wantonly violate the law, the US has no right condemning them for descending on lawless elements.

All arrests are carried out with full respect for the rights and freedoms of the individuals concerned, which can not be said for the way the US treated prisoners at Abu Ghraib and is treating inmates at Guantanamo Bay.

I am very disappointed with the US’ predilection for reckless false propaganda against our country.

However, through our actions and interaction with all visitors, we Zimbabweans can prove without any doubt that the US is peddling falsehoods, the same way it lied and continues to lie about countries it targets for illegal regime change.

The US may have succeeded in isolating other countries from the rest of the world, but we will never allow it to succeed where our country is concerned.

The Americans should know that we Zimbabweans are smart enough to understand their hostile foreign policy, and the extent to which Uncle Sam can go to realise his dreams.

It is, however, unfortunate that some among us are swayed by such infantile propaganda, but believe me the world knows the truth about Zimbabwe, and we should do everything in our power to expose US lies.

We must let the world know that our country is a safe tourist destination and we are masters of our own destiny.

While there is no doubt that we can benefit a lot from US visitors, we can certainly do without them if they still believe George W. Bush who lied a record 237 times over Iraq alone.

Antiwar, gay-rights and other activist groups were listed on the site.

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA -- The Alabama Department of Homeland Security has taken down a website it operated that included gay-rights and antiwar organizations in a list of groups that could include terrorists.

The website identified different types of terrorists and included a list of groups it suggested could spawn terrorists. The list also included environmentalists, animal rights advocates and abortion opponents.

The director of the department, Jim Walker, said his agency received calls and e-mails from people who said they felt the site unfairly targeted certain people because of their beliefs. He said he planned to reinstate the website but would no longer identify specific types of groups.

Howard Bayliss, chairman of the gay-rights group Equality Alabama, said he didn't understand why gay-rights advocates would be on the list.

"Our group has only had peaceful demonstrations. I'm deeply concerned we've been profiled in this discriminatory matter," Bayliss said.

The site included the groups under a description of what it called "single-issue extremists." That group includes people who feel they are trying to create a better world, the website said. It said that in some communities, law enforcement officers considered certain single-issue groups to be a threat.

"Single-issue extremists often focus on issues that are important to all of us. However, they have no problem crossing the line between legal protest and ... illegal acts, to include even murder, to succeed in their goals," it read.

Walker said the site had been up since spring 2004, and had gotten a relatively small number of hits until it recently became the subject of blogs.

Birmingham lawyer Eric Johnston, president of the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition, said he was concerned about any list that described people doing social justice work as terrorists.

"Our group's main mission is educational.

"The thought that we would somehow be harboring terrorists escapes me," he said.

I can't close my eyesThe empty bed chases sleep awayAnd my life is melting awayAnd it's disappearing quickly, in a split secondIt seems I'm losing my mindAs I don't even notice realityI still love youI still trust you blindlyLike crazy, I don't know where to goI'm afraid of a new loveAnd the days are like open woundsI don't count them anymorePrayer, like ardour on my lipsPrayer, just your name, instead of wordsHeaven knows, just as I doHow many times I've repeated thisHeaven knows, just as I doThat your name is my only prayerBut I can't lie to GodAs long as I prayAnd I'd be lying if I saidThat I don't love youPrayer, like ardour on my lipsPrayer, just your name, instead of wordsHeaven knows, just as I doHow many times I've repeated thisHeaven knows, just as I doThat your name is my prayer

Prayer, prayerAnd heaven knows, just as I doHow many times I've repeated thisHeaven knows, just as I doThat your name is my only prayerThat your name is my prayer

"Molitva" (Serbian Cyrillic: ???????; English: "Prayer") was the winning song of the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest, and was performed by the Serbian singer Marija Šerifovic'. It was Serbia's Eurovision debut as an independent nation, as the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro dissolved in June 2006.

Molitva was the first song containing no English language lyrics to win since 1998 ("Wild Dances" by Ruslana, the 2004 winner, had contained some English phrases). It was also the first time a ballad has won since televoting became the standard. The song is also notable for its stage presentation because it lacked dance routines, revealing or showy costumes, pyrotechnics and other gimmicks. The Eurovision Song Contest is often accused of concentrating on these things instead of the music itself. Many elements of "Molitva" contrasted with the previous winner, "Hard Rock Hallelujah".

Other versions

The English version is called "Destiny", the Russian version is called "Molitva" and the Finnish version "Rukoilen". The song has also been released as a dance remix and a remix named "Jovan Radomir mix" by Swedish TV-presenter Jovan Radomir. An instrumental version has also been released.[1]

Accusations of plagiarism

Two days after the final, some Albanians claimed that the song was plagiarised from Albanian artist Soni Malaj's song Ndarja.[2] This has however been denied by Macedonian composer Marjano Filipovski, author of Ndarja[3].

===========

The Sun (UK tabloid)Monday 14 May 2007Serbia 'stole' winning songSERBIA'S victory celebrations in this year's Eurovision Song Contest have been marred by claims the track is a COPY of another song and accusations of eastern European block voting.

Critics reckon Molitva, performed by Marija Šerifovic, is a rip-off of an old Albanian track.

One man who has posted a video comparing the two songs side by side online told me: "I knew this Albanian song long ago. It won a popular song competition called Top Fest that is organised there yearly.

"As soon as I heard Serbia's song I realised it was plagiarised.

"I am not aware if they did it intentionally or not but the similarity was obvious."

Meanwhile the awful SCOOCH - who finished second from last in the contest with just 19 points - and host TERRY WOGAN have claimed the vote was more about politics than singing.

Terry said: "Block voting detracts and I don't think we'll end it.

"But still, we only came second last. Unfortunately Ireland came last. And western European countries were left out in the cold, I'm afraid."

Scooch member David added: "We hoped this year would be different with no 'old pals' act in the voting.

"It was our best ever performance. We thought we'd really flown the flag for the UK but we were vote victims. It is a farce.

"The best song never seems to win."

Sorry David - you might be right about the voting tactics but your performance still scored 19 points too many.

- 30 -

Have Your SayTell us what you think of this storyADD YOUR VIEWS HEREShare your views with others, in real time, on our discussion boards.DISCUSS WITH OTHER SUN READERSReader Submissions

Serbia 'stole' winning song

Serbia did just pinch the song, they stole Jamie Cullam too and pretended he was a hideous looking short girl. The glasses fooled no one.Posted_by: RitoPauDid Serbia Steal the Winning Song?

The article refers to "critics say Serbia stole the winning song"? Which "critics"? Albanians upset that they didn't win? I've listened to both songs a number of times ...Posted_by: melwolfeSerbia 'stole' winning song

How about this !? Its most likekly Albania stole this song from Mariah Carey, ha ??! Soni /Albanian Song/ #####//####youtube.com/watch?v=4NvjII8_8AM Mariah Carey #####//####youtube.com/watch?v=4S ...Posted_by: TzuiSerbia 'stole' winning song

who gives a toss its a crap contest and should be banned - it is clear that most Eastern European bands have zip to offer!Posted_by: fly87Serbia 'stole' winning song

Hello Everybody, I think the the Serbian song was tolen fromt he wonderful Albanian song of Soni Malaj. Serbians can not sing as Albanians do. Shame on them. EltonPosted_by: Elton

27 May 2007

Unidentified footbridge, maybe Papua New Guinea, from the maths page of "Making The Modern World." In our time, a lot of footbridges have been built or upgraded to become spectacular tourist attractions. This is not a popular tourist attraction (although I'd go there, particularly if it is PNG, in a heartbeat).

For a reasonable risk of sudden terrifying death, human beings imagine a bridge where there is no bridge, think out what such a bridge will be after they make it exist, often with nothing written down -- maybe a couple of stick scratches in the dirt -- build it, and then cross it scores of times a year to annihilate a difficult, risky two-hour walk. Spiders make webs, but I think human beings are the only Earth life form that makes bridges. Homo faber, some call us, others Homo habilis. The Pope of the Catholic Church is, among many other things, the Pontifex Maximus. I don't think any anthropologist or zoologist has ever called us Homo aleator, but that would certainly fit a lot of what makes us distinctive.

Risk can be described mathematically to illuminate the relationship between the Lolipop we want so much, and the tiger's cage at the zoo where we've spotted it. These equations are from Game Theory, and are very easy to model on a computer. See specifically "The Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma" an invention of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. A recent theory suggests that we love casinos and gambling so much because it reminds us how our ancestors felt when, starving, they would run up against a wooly mammoth with a long stick with a sharp rock tied to one end.

Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you.

Ordinarily I wander around town in the unfocused haze of a 3-year old, but I spent a week in late October in Churchill, Manitoba Canada, where it is imperative to spend as little time as possible outside, and when you must go outside, you don't dawdle or linger or tarry, and you constantly have to look behind you. When you get to your destination, a large sign says

BOLT THE DOOR

and doesn't say PLEASE.

Yet people have chosen to live around there for about 30,000 years. Polar bears and grizzlies and kodiaks, when you kill one of them in a fair fight with neolithic weapons, are tasty, have a lot of meat and fat, and there's no better fur in the Arctic (except wolverine fur). You can't eat polar bear liver because it's so rich in stored vitamin D it would be poisonous. Most of the time a polar bear complains that he's too hot, not too cold.

Probably the most thrilling game human beings ever chose to play were The Great Voyages. Here are the rules:

1. You've lived your whole life on a tropical Pacific island.

2. You and some other volunteers of both sexes build a raft and load it with coconuts, fruit, a breeding pair of pigs and some jars of drinkable water.

3. Sail east. (All the good islands to the west already have lots of people, who don't want you there.)

4. You navigate by Sun, Moon and stars, clouds and sky colors, flights of birds, color, texture, currents and smell of the sea and floating debris, and kinds of fish.

5. When the water, coconuts and fruit are gone, you figure out how to get more drinkable water and more food in the middle of the ocean.

6. If you kill and eat a pig, the other volunteers will kill you.

7. You have no weather forecasts and may be sailing right into a taifun. The ocean is filled with deadly submerged reefs.

8. You don't know if there's any dry land in your direction, no matter how long you sail. A typical successful voyage may take as long as three years.

9. There's a 95 percent chance you'll die of starvation and thirst or drowning, with no dry land in sight.

Successful players of The Great Voyages, originating in southeast Asia, eventually populated (and brought pigs to) every island in the Pacific; their Polynesian languages are structurally related. Many of them may not have been volunteers, but were forced to leave their home island by overpopulation pressure or at the points of spears.

In "Aliens," an exciteable young Marine panics when he realizes he and his squad cannot escape a primitive planet infested by superpowerful carnivorous predators. He screams: "That's it! GAME OVER!"

~ ~ ~

One day in the early 1700s, a footbridge like this -- the famed "Bridge of San Luis Rey" -- collapsed and plummeted five random people on random journeys to their deaths into a chasm in Peru. Or so Thornton Wilder's story says. A priest who witnessed the seemingly meaningless. senseless tragedy was convinced that if he studied everything about it and the lives of the victims, he could prove God's existence and discover God's mysterious plan.

Vleeptron is certainly no close friend or admirer of recently resigned Prime Minister Tony Blair, commonly described by his ruder critics as "Bush's poodle."

Political leadership consists not merely of wise and ethical decisions, but also of Words, an art of weaving words which touch hearts and resonate in minds and memory. When Abraham Lincoln dedicated a cemetery to the slaughtered soldiers from the Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, his short speech -- he scribbled it on an envelope on his train ride from Washington DC -- was sandwiched between several long, florid masterpieces of Victorian oratory, and American newspapers practically ignored Lincoln's remarks and heaped praise on the Great Public Gasbags who spoke for hours.

By the time of 9/11, Thornton Wilder's "Bridge of San Luis Rey" (1928) had been largely forgotten in American literature, remembered as a quaint and dainty footnote of a more innocent age. High school English teachers may still require students to read it, because it contains no sex acts or sexually vulgar words. But the novel can be quite brutally candid about one person's love for another person.

But when Blair faced the horrible task of flying to New York City nine days after the terrorist attacks to speak at a memorial service, he faced a question that has tormented human beings since they first taught themselves to speak:

What can anyone say to make sense of death? And if we can make no sense of death, what can anyone say that will, in some tiny way, comfort the living?

So this is not my declaration of love for Tony Blair. Rather it is Vleeptron's appreciation of the buried treasure that enriches, and sometimes even comforts us from a good education (Oxford University, St. John's College).

If someone wishes to advise us that it was not Blair, but a speechwriter, who resurrected Wilder's Bridge for this speech, then please identify the speechwriter and let us know where she/he went to school. Some Vleeptron readers have kids, others are kids thinking about college, and they might appreciate little hints about exceptional schools that shape exceptional intellects who grow up to enrich our poor, suffering Planet Earth. Bush went to Yale and then Harvard Business School, he is our first president to hold an MBA degree.

To memorialize their alumni who died in the 9/11 attacks, Boston College built an outdoor Chartres Labyrinth, which the public is invited to walk in quiet contemplation.

Lincoln was born into squalid poverty and illiteracy in frontier Kentucky, was mostly self-taught, and never took a college course. He read the law in an Illinois lawyer's office, and proved every theorem in a borrowed copy of Euclid's "Elements" after a successful politician rewarded young Lincoln with a state surveyor job for which he had no training.

I went to (among several other fine institutions of higher learning) NYU. The Olsen Twins recently enrolled there, too, but I went to the Bronx campus, which you can see in the movie "A Beautiful Mind."

This is the text of the reading given by the prime minister, Tony Blair, at the memorial service for British victims of the New York terrorist attacks in St Thomas's Church

There is no reading, there are no words, that can truly comfort those who are grieving the loss of their loved ones today; and no matter how we try to make sense of it all it is hard, so hard, to do.

Nine days on, there is still the shock and disbelief; there is anger; there is fear; but there is also, throughout the world, a profound sense of solidarity; there is courage; there is a surging of the human spirit.

We wanted to be here today, to offer our support and sympathy to the families of the lost ones. Many are British. Amid the enormity of what has happened to America, nobody will forget that this was the worst terrorist attack on British citizens in my country's history.

The bonds between our countries for so long so strong, are even stronger now. For my reading I have chosen the final words of The Bridge of San Luis Rey written by Thornton Wilder in 1927. It is about a tragedy that took place in Peru, when a bridge collapsed over a gorge and five people died.

A witness to the deaths, wanting to make sense of them and explain the ways of God to his fellow human beings, examined the lives of the people who died, and these words were said by someone who knew the victims, and who had been through the many emotions, and the many stages, of bereavement and loss.

"But soon we will die, and all memories of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love. The only survival, the only meaning."

I am this week in receipt of a very nice e-mail offer from a very courteous gentleman to run a small text ad, with a link, onthis recent VleeptronZ post.

The post is about one of Vleeptron's regular concerns, drug policy and reform.

The ad, if I let it run, will steer readers to a private drug rehabilitation treatment facility in California.

Which, in theory, I approve of. Getting messed up on and over your head with drugs is a Medical Thing, and this ad could help some drug-troubled people or their loved ones find them some Medical Help.

I run the ad, the guy says he sends meU$35 .

(NOW I see how everybody but me has been getting RICH with their blogs!!!)

Anyway,please consider this a Public Comment Period.

* Should I run this ad?

* Should Vleeptron run ads?

* Will this ad make you think Vleeptron is just another CyberProstitute?

Or do you think this is a Good Thing? I would like to consider a Fantasie in which some troubled human being is surfing around for stuff about Drugs, finds my post, reads the ad, clicks the link, calls up the rehab center, and gets some competent medical help.

I will be sincerely grateful for any advice you have to offer. I'll want to share your Comments with readers, but for This Occasion Only, if you're shy, you can log in as Anonymous, or FreeAdviceGrl, or JournalismEthicsGuy.

The brilliant and beautiful Amy was an old fan of my old extinct website, "Elmer Elevator's Discount Prep." She looked at an image of about 400 big round colored spheres and guessed it was a molecule of insulin, which indeed it was. She Is Smart.

Mike, you certainly earned the usual Pizza for cracking the Yobbo Intercept.

But now that you've amazed the Solar System with your Code-Breaking Skills, maybe you'd like to try for a prize that's worth a little more than Pizza.

Bedford County, Virginia must be a very odd place. My guess is it has more holes dug in it than any comparable region on Planet Earth.

Elmer Elevator's Discount Prep offered two Get-Rich-Quick schemes. I'll skip the first one for now -- programming a championship computer Go program -- because if you can do that, all you get for your hard work is a cheesy U$1,000,000 prize offered by a dead Taiwanese millionaire.

The second Get-Rich-Quick scheme seems right up Mike's alley.

For many years, the standard history and technical reference for codes was Kahn's "The Codebreakers." It's been superceded by a more up-to-date book,"The Code Book," by Simon Singh. (Click on his website and hose up £10,000 by solving some "easy" codes.)

Singh says something very interesting about The Beale Ciphers.

Maybe they're the key to a fabulous buried treasure.

Maybe there is no treasure.

But historically, that's not why the Beale Ciphers are important. It's not about the fabulous buried treasure.

Since around 1880, trying to solve/decode Beale's codedDocument 1 (the precise location of Beale's fabulous buried treasure) has been the inspiration for every kid who went on to become an important professional (government, secret, NSA, university, academic, etc.) cryptographer.

Every important professional cryptographer read about the Beale Ciphers and the Buried Treasure, and started by devoting months or years to trying to crack the Beale Ciphers.

By the time they finally gave up in frustration -- they were world-class code experts! With a job, a security clearance, a university chair, health insurance and a reserved parking space.

Beale's Treasure may be total bullshit.

But trying to decode Beale's Document 1 has turned out to be of immense value to the evolution of the entire science of cryptography. For more than a century, Beale's real buried treasure has been the growth, power and sophistication of this fascinating branch of logic and mathematics.

But then there's always that buried fortune in gold and precious jewels ..............

================

As I walk along the Bois de Boulogne With an independent air You can see the ladies stare -- "He must be a millionaire!" You can see them sigh and wink an eye And to wish that they could die For The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carrrrrrrlo!

Merci to Didier K., an actual French guy, for correcting my spelling of Bois de Boulogne.

Get-Rich-Quick $cheme No. 2The Beale Ciphers

Okay okay in 1817 a guy from Virginia named Thomas J. Beale put together an expedition of about twenty fellow adventurers and went to explore the American wilderness west of the Mississippi. Somewhere in what's now New Mexico they stumbled upon a cave with enormously rich veins of silver and gold. They took it back to St. Louis in wagons, exchanged some of it for more portable precious jewels, then took the treasure to Bedford County, Virginia, and buried it in iron pots in a vault within four miles of Buford's Tavern (whose foundations still exist). They went back West the next year and did it all over again.

Beale wrote three documents in code:

1. The preci$e location of the trea$ure.

2. A detailed description of the treasure.

3. A list of all the expedition members (shareholders in the treasure).

Beale used to stay in a hotel in Lynchburg, Virginia, and became friends with the innkeeper. When he went off on another expedition into the wilderness in 1822, he left the three coded documents with the innkeeper. He never returned.

Toward the end of the Civil War [1861-1865], the innkeeper passed the coded documents to a friend, James Beverly Ward, who spent decades, and finally got lucky and inspired and figured out that the key to Document 2 was The Declaration of Independence. Using the Declaration, he decoded Document 2.

If Beale was telling the truth, the buried treasure is worth around

$22,000,000 !!! in today's money.

No one has ever decoded Documents 1 and 3 !!! (Not that anyone really cares about 3.)

But the Coded Text -- long lists of numbers -- has been carefully copied and circulated for years. You can get it all at

Those of you who don't believe this outlandish story; or who can't program a computer; or are sure they can never crack the Beale Ciphers; or who think it's too much of an effort ... well, just Go Away.

In "The Gold Bug," Edgar Alan Poe wrote that any Code one mind could devise, another astute, determined mind could eventually break. Poe was a brilliant pioneer in Cryptography, and computed the tables of most frequently used alphabet letters in English writing. Such tables (different for different languages) remain invaluable in Cryptography to this day.

Poe was Absolutely Right for all the most important secret codes in the world -- things like the Japanese Purple and German Enigma codes of World War II -- well into very recent times. The earliest electronic digital computers were invented in secret to crack these codes, and were so successful that it seemed obvious that powerful Supercomputers would always stay one step ahead of any new secret code. (For more about the fascinating world of Secret Codes, read Kahn's The Codebreakers. It's a book. There's nothing to click on. Go to the bookstore or the library, okay?)

Then in 1978, Things Changed. Using large Prime Numbers, S. Pohlig and M. Hellman invented a type of code called "trap-door" or "one-way encryption," the basis for Public Key Cryptography, which computer communications use today. The best theories are (almost) absolutely certain that the world's most powerful supercomputers will take centuries to break these Large-Prime-Number codes!

But ... Beale made his codes in the early 19th century, and if the methods he used for Document 2 are those he used for Document 1, these are fairly primitive, crude codes. The reason they haven't been broken is that you need to figure out what book or document Beale used as the Key -- the way he used the Declaration of Independence for Document 2.

It probably has to be:

* a standardized document -- that is, something which has almost exactly the same wording and spelling no matter what the edition

* a widely-circulated, widely owned document in the early 19th century, like the King James Bible.

[I also think another good candidate would be Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress."]

Oh. I forgot. You'll need to buy a shovel and rent a big truck.

* * * * * * *

By the way ...

Just what, exactly, will you do with your $1,000,000 Ing Prize, or your $22,000,000 Beale Treasure?